Including Missing Voices – Hearing the voices of Disabled people in Gypsy, Roma and Traveler communities. Shaping Our Lives and the University of Worcester are jointly researching the representation and inclusion of disabled people in Gypsy, Roma and Traveler communities.

Shaping Our Lives and the National Survivor User Network (NSUN), two key national disabled people’s and service user networks, have both experienced considerable numbers of user-led organisations closing over the last three years. The two organisations decided to raise awareness of the crisis facing user-led organisations by writing a briefing and hosting an action workshop.

A Refuge for All is a project led by disabled women with experience of violence and abuse. An advisory group of disabled women have reviewed the progress of the project at regular intervals. This Findings Report and the Best Practice Toolkit provide a user-led approach to improving access for disabled women for service providers who want to achieve a high standard of service delivery for disabled women

Shaping Our Lives is delighted to be part of this innovative project. Disabled people have an insight into successful parenting from their own lived experience and can apply strategies to fostering that would be very beneficial to looked after children.

Listening to and respecting service users’ voices and perspectives is increasingly known to be an essential part of developing quality health and social care services. Shaping Our Lives has pioneered service user involvement in all aspects of policy, planning and delivery of services.

This position statement was produced by BASW England (British Association of Social Workers) and Shaping Our Lives. It was written through discussions between disabled adults and social workers from June 2015 to November 2016.

Through interviews with people holding strongly opposing views about whether assisted dying should be legalised, Professor Peter Beresford OBE and colleagues identified and explored a surprising amount of common ground – including the clear agreement that palliative care provision for the terminally ill is currently inadequate.

There are growing concerns about UK mental health policy and services. They are widely seen as being in ‘crisis’, chronically underfunded and having fallen far behind physical healthcare. There are also more fundamental worries that they are over-reliant on a narrowly-based medicalised conceptual framework which can be stigmatizing and unhelpful for service users.